In other spots, there’s a creeping air of spookiness tempered by an almost cartoonish playfulness that sounds like either a masked killer or a wily coyote is sneaking up behind you. Praise be to those albums that can aurally evoke emotion and vivid imagery. [No. 130, p.59]

Martsch and Co. have dipped their bucket deep into the well of pop's past to create a recombinant, joyous sound that has few modern equals. [#51, p.87]

After making three great albums in a row, for Marshall to turn in a merely decent one seems like a letdown. [#71, p.88]

Blame current remastering techniques or the prescience of its makers, each of these collections sound future-forward (then) and very now (wow). [No. 133, p.53]

Although Beast Epic does not broadcast its complexity and depth as with some past Iron & Wine efforts, it's still lovely, dark and deep. [No. 145, p.58]

Bestial Burden works because of its methodical execution--a calculated piece of catharsis that towers over all other bedroom power electronics tape-peddlers. [No. 114, p.59]

Guitar player Martin Belmont and keyboard ace Bob Andrews shine throughout, adding subtle fills and accents that give plenty of sparkle to arrangements that still merge R&B and rock with hints of funk and reggae. [No. 121, p.59]

These songs benefit from Gundersen’s past, yet leave hope (some of it, at least) and genteelness behind in a cloud of ambient smoke. Good. [No. 123, p.59]

The Midnight Organ Fight's bloodied-but-unbowed lyrics stand up to repeated listening even on the fastest cutes. [Summer 2008, p.106]

Saint Etienne's latest album is masterful: fanatically detailed, intelligent and swimming in lovely melodies and delicious electronic bleeps... easily one of the year's standout albums. [#46, p.90]

Aside from getting off on the wrong foot and then later making an awkward exit, the bulk of Illusion is a bristling. [No. 97, p.57]

Throughout, minimally invasive production from Vladislav Delay creates a fuller sense of emptiness, resulting in one big, glorious downer. [No. 112, p.61]

Pajo comes as close to capturing his mercurial talent and shifting identiy as we're ever likely to hear. [#68, p.106]

The real pleasure is the instigation to sit through and hear JPSE go through the good, the bad and the near misses of a career that took the band from a light-hearted party outfit with an ingratiating delicate side in Christchurch, New Zealand, to game, but stressed-out grunts trying to flog big, catchy hooks that should have caught on with the Yo La Tengo and My Bloody Valentine crowds (yet never did). [No. 122, p.56]

Tastefully rendered and thoughtfully executed, American Dreamer invites you into its loose embrace while still maintaining a certain emotional distance. [No. 135, p.59]

One of the more important metal releases of 2017. [No. 146, p.59]

Be Small connotes acceptance of the intimacy Temple can't seem to breach. [No. 126, p.57]

While the Universe is a fairly subdued affair, its quiet quality speaks volumes. [No.89, p.61]

The comforting melodies offset Toth's poetic wordplay, shining a light on lyrics that are alternately comforting and disturbing. [No. 110, p.61]

The album is so unassuming and unhurried that it's easy to dismiss. Just hang in there and play it again. [#74, p.97]

If Dunger is trying to shed the [Van Morrison] comparison, Here's My Song won't help matters. [#71, p.94]

The Memphis ambassadors display strength after songwriting strength. [No. 124, p.59]

Like their English ancestors, the Girls deal almost exclusively in exuberance and wonderment, making found squalls and rattles sound like their own. But that might have more to do with the copious amounts of reverb echoing through the album’s best songs.

It's a weirdness that works. [No. 111, p.53]

A masterpiece that flows brilliantly. [#75, p.97]

Equitable with the Fall's bossiest, most brazen moments. [#70, p.94]

Autechre's are notions are studied as they are transportive and on Exai, the duo fairly dares us not to lose ourselves. [No. 96, p.53]

At an hour long, Infiniheart occasionally feels infinite, but moments of perfection make VanGaalen's meanderings seem a necessary part of the whole appealing coincidence. [#69, p.110]

Terrifically jangling. [#73, p.99]

The perfect companion piece for black-lit nights at home. [No. 144, p.61]

Sounding awfully familiar much of the time, Silver Age may not be Mould's best work - and it's certainly not his most original. But it's got a weathered shine. [No.91 p.57]

The Take Off is not all that remarkable the first few times around, but it nonetheless hints at rewarding repeat visits. [No. 108, p.55]

In truth, Springsteen himself might not be able to pull off the grit and glam of Pretty Years, but Cymbals Eat Guitars makes it look easy. [No. 135, p.55]

The country-tarnished/garage/indie/glam-rock edge of this collection of 10 tracks has not one disappointment. [No. 129, p.60]

On record, the Constantines' contemplative songs have always fared best, and Tournament is an album almost full of them. [#69, p.92]

Monday is the greatest in a line of albums from a band that hopefuly has a few more years of screwing up and falling down on its itinerary. [#59, p.87]

{Awayland} is far more confident than 2010's Becoming A Jackal, its vision more ambitious, its poetry more conflicted, its melodies more complex, its execution more polished. [No. 98, p.61]

It's a caustic dose of trashcore and punk that's light on melody, but loaded with riffs. [No. 103, p.59]

That this LP is less summit than plateau says more about the level of past work than anything lacking from this one. [No.88 p.61]

Segall makes quite a cacophonous rock 'n' roll racket with infectious pop stompers like rousing, four-on-the-floor rocker "You're The Doctor" and the menacing, rolling riffage of "They Told Me To." Yet, the headroom in the mix makes so the oceans of pulverizing reverb don't swallow the hooks. [No. 92, p.59]

There's a noisy undercurrent on Breaks in the Armor, which may become even more prevalent with the return of and cross-pollination with Archers Of Loaf, but the album's stripped-back, still powerful songs might be indicating Crooked Finger's path from here.[#82, p. 54]

Though Calvi hardly ever breaks from her aesthetic on One Breath, she owns it so well that you'd be hard-pressed to complain. [No. 105, p.53]

Townshend-ian windmills are all over... but it's greatest when Lucas makes his politics explicit on this record on the stomping "woo-ooh" hooked "They Saved Reagan's Brain" or breaks musical script for the intense metal-with-horns of "Here Comes Ol' Laptop." [No.92 p.55]

At the core are lyrics abstract enough to keep you coming back and digging for meaning until the next moles record, however many decades off that might be. [No. 135, p.56]

The melodies are strong, but they have a moody, hopeless character that perfectly fits these tales of missed connections and love gone terribly wrong. [No. 110, p.57]

White's aesthetic, as always, is grounded in the immediate and the visceral, and Lazaretto rocks. [No. 111, p.60]

Though it reveals apparent influences ranging from Eyeless in Gaza to Simple Minds, the Baltimore trio's third album finds the band updating rather than simply recreating. [#82, p. 55]

Ascent is an album that manages to find the perfect harmony between the normal and the weird, the dirty and the clean, the psychedelic and the straight. Put it in your psych-rock emergency kit. [No.90, p.60]

Swing Lo Magellen sounds forced and cluttered... highlights a dearth of skill when it comes to self-editing. [No.89 p.54]

It's as raucous and vital as their first three. [No. 93, p.52]

This record's controls are set for the heart of the drone, and the crew knows precisely where they're going. [No. 100, p.53]

Whether juxtaposed with string sections, dark electronics or thumping beats, Moyet's deeply sonorous voice is still the dramatic center. [No. 143, p.59]

The record's two pieces are fields of rhythm that seem to pull away from your reach like a curtain blowing in a breeze, yet swing back to knock you on your ass. [No. 208, p.57]

Slow Focus finds them instituting a newfound affinity for broken, off-kilter beats, alongside their now-signature knack for teasing irresistible melodies out of chaotic, discordant noise. [No. 101, p.54]

Enjoying Furr, then, depends entirely on your ability (or willingness) to ignore the heavy footprints of familiar musicians.

Works For Tomorrow maybe doesn't sound quite as fiery as 1988's Prairie School Freakout, 1989's Beet or, even, 2011's Riot Now! But it gets awfully close. [No. 123, p.57]

The arrangements turn more delicate and acoustic as the songs grow more hopeful. [No. 131, p.61]

Basically, he's Bob Dylan in a hoodie. [#59, p.98]

He calls this collection of tunes "California noir," and the album delivers on that promise with songs that explore the deteriorating American dream in all its faded glory. [No. 139, p.59]

"The Lost You" is a breathless, if unfortunate, peak. What follows are four miserable, mostly tuneless dirges that bring a slow death to [the] album. [#67, p.97]

To hear them here, in nascent form, performed by a band that had only played 10 shows in its lifetime, is to hear the nervous current that flowed through Fugazi when it had everything yet to prove, and a lifetime of excellent work ahead of it. Highly recommended. [No. 116, p.56]

His voice wafting in as it from across some great, wide divide, he drapes heavy-lidded seductions and portending cautionary tales over several decades of occultish folk, ritualistic rhythm and acoustic blues, from Bron-Y-Aur stomps to paralyzed lullabies. [No. 101, p.51]

A thoroughly enjoyable and loving tribute. [No. 142, p.57]

They plunge once more into a spontaneously generated maelstrom of corroded noise and spasmodic rock action, letting the music flow like lava oozing destructively through the streets of your town. [No. 134, p.55]

The Ship is delightful in every fashion. [No. 131, p.55]

The album's greatest treasures are sadder and subtler, finding their place within the Willie trifecta of love, loss and loneliness. [No. 142, p.59]

The more writerly approach hasn't dulled the duo's riffage one iota, even if this is their most musically expansive and easily their most musically expansive and easily their cleanest-sounding outing yet. [No. 139, p.56]

Spades is a grower, as they say, only revealing its charms to patient listeners over repeated listens. [No. 143, p.51]

More of the same, yes, but riding what sounds like an autumnal rebirth. [#58, p.86]

The problem is that the half-hour Squares is as unfocused and repetitive as a double album. [#59, p.108]

For anyone who would like to experience all of Hansard's estimable gifts in a single listening session, he has thoughtfully provided a compendium of his patented brilliance on Didn't He Ramble. [No. 124, p.56]

This album finds Patton in his glory. [No. 120, p.55]

The sound here is languid and lo-fi, even when it's rocking. [No. 123, p.61]

Nelson and co-composer Buddy Cannon work magic on cocky self-assurance mixed with self-deprecation and the glory of womanhood in a manner befitting this wordsmith's living-legend status. [No. 101, p.56]

Few of Creed's peers pursue songs and sounds this blazingly epic and weirdly experimental. [No. 112, p.53]

It's jauntier, if still jaundiced, and contains some of Gainsbourg's best compositions. [No. 138, p.57]

The Hope Six Demolition Project is yet another remarkable PJ Harvey effort. [No. 130, p.54]

[Runner] is something more akin to Eliot Smith, but airier, and with more synth. [No.92 p.58]

While Gibson is often humane, she's not always gentle. [No. 130, p.57]

I Am A Problem still explores texture and discomfort like Wolf Eyes always has, but now have riffs. [No. 126, p.60]

Much of the LP will be familiar to anyone who caught them on the road last year, but songs that curled into smoky haze onstage come into sharp focus here. [No.92 p.61]

It's not an easy listen--"Greener Stretch" is one of the rare songs that has an immediate hook--but it commands, and rewards, attention. [No. 147, p.61]

A collection that's at once futuristic and timeless, Across The Multiverse is sure to wow friends, family and followers alike. [No. 145, p.57]

Finds the group farther afield than ever from the playful, energetic randomness that made its first records so utterly fantastic. [#52, p.88]

A catchy rock record steeped in intelligent social and personal commentary that incorporates pedal and lap steel with great cowpunk results. [#60, p.119]

Elements of glam, power pop and soul creep into the Tyde's pool of sound, making for a winning, genre-spanning formula. [#60, p.117]

A total triumph. [#50, p.82]

There are hard and soft edges all over Every Country's Sun, and both accounts have made us happy campers. Again. [No. 146, p.56]

Give Up is a record that says, well, nothing. [#58, p.100]

Dirty Pictures (Part 1) is the perfect appetizer to the boozy, bluesy world of Low cut Connie. [No. 144, p.55]

By keeping the songs a little shorter, and by bandleader Gustav Ejstes not being such a musical ball hog this time around, Dungen has made a record that’s far more sophisticated musically and melodically.

He dips into that well [roots/Americana] again on The Westerner, with producers Howe Gelb and Dave Way opening up the sound with layers of guitar effects that create a dark, spacey atmosphere. [No. 131, p.55]

Post Pop Depression comes across like a third Pop partnership with Bowie, only more brutal and more elegiacally touched by the shadows of the smiles in Pop's memory. [No. 130, p.56]

Enthralling music that embraces you like your mama never did. [#69, p.87]

These guys do so many things well--now if they could only find their weird again. [No. 95, p.52]

The album is singularly that of Ono's deliciously odd aesthetic. [No. 102, p.59]

Tweedy is a certified master of the simple, effective melody--time and again, he's built something grand from the pieces of something small, and trace evidence of this trick is splattered all over Schmilco. [No. 136, p.60]

Though it isn't as catchy or streamlined as Lifestyle, one of Italian Platinum's many strengths is the continued ability of bassist Tim Midgett and guitarist Andy Cohen to pen lyrics that are downcast yet inspirational, witty yet insightful, sometimes all at once. [#55, p.86]